March 2006
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A Plague on Plagiarism – but there’s a lot more at stake here than rip-offs By William Bowles
31 March 2006 Like a lot of other independent journalists I’ve seen my work published on corporate Websites without my permission (or without being paid) including al-Jazeera and Yahoo. The terms of my copyright are clearly laid out in my Creative Commons license (see below). But worse still, mainstream publications seem to think that work… Continue reading
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Beware the Ides of March By William Bowles
Unlike many of my brethren (and not for the first time), I am seem to be out of step about the apocalyptic visions that are currently populating the Webosphere concerning an immanent invasion of Iran. Continue reading
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Media Lens: Curiosities Of Utopian Thinking
Sean O’Grady wrote recently in the ad-filled motoring supplement of The Independent: “in answer to the many letters we get criticising some of our coverage, we don’t make cars. We just write about them. […] We try to concentrate on telling our readers about the many many ways you can enjoy motoring without costing the… Continue reading
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Extra! Extra! Do something about it! By William Bowles
25 March 2006 Judging by the stats on the site’s usage, many thousands of you read the daily GI Special, in fact it’s one of the most read sections on InI. The reason I mention it is that it reveals that the information put out by the MSM not just on Iraq but on virtually… Continue reading
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Media Lens: Iraq Anniversary – BBC Whitewash
How could the war possibly be justified when the ‘justification’ was said by Tony Blair to be the “serious and current threat” posed by Iraqi WMD? And how can “disastrous miscalculation” be presented as the opposing argument? Continue reading
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Race Matters By William Bowles
21 March 2006 These days, writing about ‘race’ is like walking on soft boiled eggs, especially if you’re a whitey but there’s no getting away from the fact that the issue of race is central to virtually all of the major issues of our times and indeed it can be argued that ever since imperialism… Continue reading
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Media Lens: Disappearing Genocide – The Media And The Death Of Slobodan Milosevic
20 March 2006 — Media Lens “If we don’t know history, then we are ready meat for carnivorous politicians and the intellectuals and journalists who supply the carving knives. But if we know some history, if we know how many times presidents have lied to us, we will not be fooled again.” (Howard Zinn, historian)… Continue reading
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Imperial Manoeuvres By William Bowles
History is a powerful weapon, perhaps that’s why they don’t teach it at school in the UK (except for the UK’s bizarre obsession with WWII, but then again it makes sense if you want to impart a sense of Britain’s former ‘greatness’ and what better propaganda weapon than our victorious struggle against the evil ‘Hun’). Continue reading
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Re “historical curiosity” or the semiotics of a war crime By William Bowles
Is it simply a historical curiosity or do you think … [the memos have] some relevance to what is happening in Iraq at the moment? The question whacked me between the eyes for what it revealed about the sick mindset of the smug and sanctimonious bastards at the BBC’s misnamed news department (I await expectantly… Continue reading
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Media Lens: Iraq Body Count Refuses To Respond
We found that the first 18 pages of the IBC database, covering the period between July 2005 and January 2006, contained just six references to ’coalition’ helicopter attacks and airstrikes killing civilians. Our research revealed that the IBC database consistently features the same bias – massive numbers of deaths caused by insurgents as compared to… Continue reading
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Creature Comforts By William Bowles
Growing up in the ‘mother of empires’, it’s difficult to comprehend how most of the world perceives us, even if, like me, you’ve lived in other cultures, it’s still difficult to ‘break the chains that bind’ us to a view of the world defined by privilege, a world of assumptions reinforced by an unrelenting barrage… Continue reading
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One nation under the sleaze By William Bowles
L’affaire Berlusconi is just the latest in a long list of sleazy goings-on that reveals a cynical ruling class that long ago abandoned any pretence at representing the citizens and a labour government that is in bed with big capital in a big way. Cosy relationships such as the one Blair has with Berlusconi, darling… Continue reading
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Media Lens: Alert: The Guff of Tonkin Incident – Silence, Secrecy and Book Reviews
Consider, for example, the issue of book reviews. What could be a less threatening or problematic area for the media? Surely it is inconceivable that literary editors would bother to suppress reviews of books written from ‘controversial’ perspectives. Continue reading
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Media Lens: Hacks and Spooks By Richard Keeble
So how many journalists are actually agents of the state, or working for agents of the state? We can think of several very likely candidates – and not just in the right-wing media. Continue reading
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Book Review: The Silence is Poisonous! Bioweapons – The US government’s Nuremburg Crime By William Bowles
Okay, what are we dealing with here? Boyle’s short and impassioned book deals with the US government’s illegal multi-billion dollar biological weapons programme. A programme, that as Boyle makes abundantly clear presents itself as “defensive” but of course, in order to produce a ‘defense’, requires the development of offensive bioweapons. Continue reading
The New Dark Age 